Agent of Democracy - Society for College and University Planning

Agent of Democracy
work for the people of [this state], and I work through
some growers to achieve an end. And the end would be
things like environmental quality and pest management.
It would be supporting an agricultural community, because
I think it adds to the landscape and to the quality of
life in the state. All of these things, I work through growers
to obtain. But my clients are really the people of [this
state], not necessarily the onion or cabbage growers, for
example. I mean, I don’t like to look at it that I’m working
just for the cabbage growers. I work for the public good
as I see it.
In this answer, we are provided with a provocative image of a
faculty member resisting the claims of special agricultural interests
that he is supposed to work for them, insisting instead that he works
“for the public good as I see it.” He implies that the land-grant
mission provides an, if not the, authority for his view of whom he
should work for. I find a similar pattern of speaking among many
of the scholars we interviewed.
There are two things about this pattern that should be noted.
First, it rarely conjures up images of publics engaged in deliberation
about what should be done to advance the public good or interest.
Rather, it conjures up images of individual scholars making judgments
about the public good or interest on their own. As the above
scholar said, “I work for the public good as I see it.” Such a statement
may seem quite praiseworthy. But from the perspective of
how judgments about the public good are best made, it is actually
quite troubling. By definition, the public good cannot be determined
by scholars on their own. It can only be determined by the work of
deliberating publics.
Despite the deeply interactive and relational view of the landgrant
mission, which many public scholars espouse, the pattern of
individualizing judgments about the public good suggests to me that
the contemporary version of the tradition of public scholarship in landgrant
colleges is not sufficiently interactive, relational, democratic, or
public. To know what the public good is and how to work for it, public
scholars need to engage in deliberation with their fellow citizens beyond
the academy. It is not clear whether or to what extent they do so.
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